As Trump and RFK Jr. Reach Into Parents’ Lives, Can Democrats Capitalize?

The prices of strollers and car seats are skyrocketing as companies race to adjust to President Trump’s tariff policies. Federal support for a major campaign to promote safe infant sleep habits appears to have been cut. Measles outbreaks are terrifying parents of young children, even as the nation’s health secretary undermines vaccines.

The Trump administration’s policies are reaching ever deeper into the lives of American families, transforming routine and apolitical parts of some parents’ days — trips to the pediatrician, conversations at swim classes, chatter on online baby gear forums — into scenes of anxiety and anger.

For a Democratic Party still searching for its strongest message amid the upheavals of the second Trump term, the politics of parenting offer a telling test case: Can Democrats persuade voters that this White House is making their lives harder?

“I’ve never heard this level of fear,” said former Representative Colin Allred, a Texas Democrat mulling a second Senate bid in his state, which has a significant measles outbreak. He said his nonpolitical friends — people who “just want to send their kids to school and watch the Cowboys play” — were “calling me and asking, like, ‘What the hell is going on?”

There are no greater motivators in politics than anger and fear. But in recent years, Republicans have been far more successful than Democrats at tapping into parents’ raw emotions.

In 2021, they rode waves of concern about pandemic-era education to victory in the Virginia governor’s race. Last year, Democrats were caught off guard as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the leader of the “Make America Healthy Again” movement and now the health secretary, helped Mr. Trump win over parents worried about food additives and swayed by false information on vaccines.